Page 15 of The Maverick

“Do we have a suspect pool yet?” Dawson asked, flipping through the printed screenshots.

Hawke tapped the image from the Denver signing event. “That’s our first solid thread. He shows up here, again six months later in Dallas. No ticket scan. No photo with her. But he’s in her proximity three separate times on footage I’ve found so far.”

Reed leaned in, studying the face blurred beneath a cap. “Ballsy.”

“Calculated,” Hawke corrected. “He never lingers. Never speaks. Never pushes contact. This is a long play.”

Gavin passed the note down the table. “This was hand-delivered?”

“Left in her mail slot. No fingerprints. No surveillance footage. And the paper’s custom stock—bespoke run from a print boutique in Austin. I’ve got Liz working on the customer list.”

“Jesus,” Jesse muttered.

“He didn’t leave DNA. He left intimacy,” Hawke said. “This wasn’t a threat. It was possession. He quoted a scene where the heroine’s already bound, marked, emotionally vulnerable. He’s letting her know he knows her. He sees her. And now he wants her to feel him watching.”

Dawson tossed the pen on the table. “Any idea if this is bleeding into her public channels?”

“Not yet,” Hawke said. “No DMs. No emails. But we’re checking through her author account now, cross-referencing IPs. I’ll need one of you to scrub her inbox manually—every reader message she’s flagged as obsessive or strange in the last twelve months.”

“I’ll take it,” Jesse said.

Reed grunted. “You just want to read fan mail from horny romance readers.”

Jesse grinned. “Guilty.”

Gavin ignored them both. “You think it’s someone from inside the club?”

That question dropped heavily.

Hawke didn’t answer right away. He pulled a USB stick from his jacket pocket, plugged it into the wall screen, and brought up a grainy still from the Iron Spur’s parking lot camera. Three weeks ago. Vanessa leaving with Keely and Roxie. Behind them, a dark SUV idling in the back corner of the lot. License plate not visible. No movement. But the timestamp lined up with the night Vanessa mentioned feeling watched.

Hawke crossed his arms.

“We’ve got someone who knows the club. Knows the security schedule. Knew how to avoid every active camera and what time to intercept her without drawing attention.”

Reed swore under his breath. “That’s an inside job.”

“Or a lifestyle insider,” Dawson said. “Someone who plays at another club, who’s familiar enough to move quietly.”

Jesse leaned forward. “Could be a switch who’s seen her scene. Could be a voyeur who’s latched on from the sidelines. Hell, could be a submissive turned obsessive Dom wannabe.”

“She thinks it’s someone she’s never scened with,” Hawke said. “She’s confident she’d remember if she’d spent any time with him.”

“Don’t assume she’d know,” Gavin warned. “If this guy’s good enough to get in and out of her house, he’s good enough to blend inside a scene.”

Hawke’s jaw locked. That was the part that gnawed at him. Not just the breach or the quote or the footage. It was that someone had been close enough to her in his space, their space, and he hadn’t seen it.

“She’s safe now,” Jesse said, more gently this time. “You’ve got eyes on her. You’ve got her in your territory.”

“That’s not enough,” Hawke said. “She wasn’t supposed to need this.”

Gavin gave him a look. Not judgment. Not pity. Just understanding. The kind you didn’t need words for after a decade in the field together.

“We run the perimeter,” Gavin said. “Dawson, take Vanessa’s calendar. See which events she had staff pull last minute. Any cancellations, security swaps, or guests that changed day-of. Reed, I want deep pulls on every man in her fan group who’s ever emailed more than once. Cross them with the boutique’s paper customer list when Liz sends it.”

Reed gave a tight nod. “On it.”

Jesse closed the file. “What about Vanessa? You telling her all this?”

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